Envisioning Multispecies Tropical Futurity: Image-Making in North Maluku’s Frontier Zone

In recent years, the name Alfred Russel Wallace, the 19th-century British naturalist who co-conceptualized the theory of natural selection and authored the book documenting species diversity throughout Indonesia, titled The Malay Archipelago (1859), has regained significance in the place where he did his research: Ternate, North Maluku (the Moluccas), Eastern Indonesia. His legacy and icon are being reclaimed by local communities, inserting themselves as authors of the region’s future, one that is centered on multispecies stewardship. Based on visual anthropology ethnographic fieldwork spanning over 15 months since the beginning of 2021, the materials presented in this article explore the perspectives of local cultural activists/practitioners in making visible their concerns, advocating for the rich multispecies existence on their island acknowledged globally since Wallace. Working with a team of university students, photography clubs, journalists, and heritage and environmental activists based in Ternate, I engage with everyday socio-cultural and visual media practices that treat images as modes of address/redress mobilizing affective engagement and political effects (Spyer & Steedly, 2013), contesting possible tropical futurities. Discussing three sites of image-making—a mural, wildlife photography, and drone-afforded reportage—I argue that these practices play a crucial role in intervening in and shaping how this tropical region is imagined at various scales, globally and nationally. Oscillating between utopian and dystopian scenarios, the images produced make a demand for a more just and livable future across species.